Elmore Leonard? Get Real!

[Ian Livingston]

> Y'all know that when one praises writer A, writer
> B's status is not automatically lowered, right?)
>

Precisely. If Leonard is to be classed among the greatest American
writers genre ceases to matter. But is comparing him to Pynchon
comparing an apple to an orange?

Well, if Leonard isn't a mystery writer, my bad for believing what
people say about him. As I said earlier in this thread, I may be due
to read something of his. Still, nothing I've seen inclines me drop
everything and run to the nearest bookstore.

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Tom Beshear <tbeshear at att.net> wrote:
> I was going to say this, but Jochen beat me to it. Leonard is NOT a mystery
> novelist, not that there's anything wrong with that. (I don't put Leonard in
> the same class as Pynchon, DeLillo, etc., cuz he isn't doing the same sort
> of thing, just as one can't say blues composers are doing the same thing as
> classical composers, etc., even if a classical composer borrows a blues
> theme. Y'all know that when one praises writer A, writer
> B's status is not automatically lowered, right?)
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "jochen stremmel" <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> To: "Ian Livingston" <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> Cc: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>; "Carvill John"
> <johncarvill at hotmail.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 2:54 PM
>
> Subject: Re: Elmore Leonard? Get Real!
>
>
> Leonard ain't no mystery writer!
>
> And only half Simenon's output are mysteries. Not the better half. And
> whoever wants to put Simenon down should read La Marie du Port.
>
>
>
> 2012/2/2 Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> P.S. If someone said I could take the collected works of only one mystery
>>> genre writer when I was abandoned on a desert island, I think I would
>>> choose Simenon.
>>
>>
>> I think I'd rather drown. Mysteries are nice, light reading, in which
>> the unknown becomes somehow known according to minimalist rules. The
>> real complexities at work in the daily lives, much more the lives of
>> adventure, get reduced to the meanest of actions complicated merely by
>> deception, whereas the human mind seeks constantly to reconstruct a
>> working model of a world in such rapid transition knowledge of fact
>> becomes nigh impossible. THAT mystery will not be solved by linear
>> progress, certainly, if it can ever be satisfactorily rectified by any
>> means at all.
>>
>> And it is the wallow of that intellectual swale that puts Pynchon,
>> occasionally McCarthy, Murakami, and a sampling of others out ahead of
>> Leonard and other mystery writers.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Jochen,
>>>
>>> Grass came to mind in the early morning because he won a Nobel and his
>>> books
>>> were published well in America.
>>> I want to read more of him, but I threw him out as a placeholding
>>> question
>>> mark for WHOEVER international
>>> writers our plisters might rate top of the pops...fill it in....
>>>
>>> And, as I indicated, I am lightly read in Leonard for no better reason
>>> than
>>> that there are so many good writers, so many
>>> good books and I am a slow, albeit voracious, reader.
>>>
>>> So, refute away. No one has yet argued against my seeing a bit of a shell
>>> game at work in the essay-writer,m not Leonard
>>>
>>> P.S. If someone said I could take the collected works of only one mystery
>>> genre writer when I was abandoned on a desert island, I think I would
>>> choose Simenon. I'd get a whole society, ala Balzac in the 20th Century.
>>> (Unless I was allowed Proust too as non-genre. Then I don't know
>>> who I'd choose.)
>>>
>>> From: jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>>> To: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
>>> Cc: igrlivingston at gmail.com; pynchon-l at waste.org
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 10:03 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Elmore Leonard? Get Real!
>>>
>>> What do you think is Chandler's best novel? The Long Goodbye? Compare
>>> it with the Maltese Falcon. It reconfirms a lot of important things
>>> about life in the USA: The business of USAmerica is business; romance
>>> is a worthwile delusion; it's hazardous to sleep with your partner's
>>> wife; women who engage in serial relationships will lie to you when
>>> the truth would do them more good; existentialism is a practical
>>> philosophy for urban males to follow; and if a man develops a
>>> professional attitude towards his work, he will probably succeed where
>>> others fail.
>>>
>>> And try to find the point of view in The Maltese Falcon and The Glass
>>> Key.
>>>
>>> And Mark, would you be so kind and tell me what you have read from
>>> Leonard? And what from Grass?
>>>
>>> J
>>>
>>>
>>> 2012/2/2 Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That piece about Leonard is great, thanks John. He's better than
>>>> Chandler, leaner, not as sentimental. Perhaps not better than Hammett.
>>>> (Leonard himself said, Willeford wrote the best crime novels.)Yeah, I've
>>>> ecnountered this line of thinking before - that Hammett is better than
>>>> Chandler. Never could understand it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant